CHAPTER 1
Melmeth, Arkhan of Ar-Khendye, Lord of the Seven Cantons, last scion of the House of Memizhon and Guardian of the Undying Flame, gazed down over the great city of Perysse. He could not sleep. The dream had returned again, he had woken clutching at darkness, trying in vain to hold her back …
Who was she?
Night after sleepless night he had climbed the winding stair to the dizzy belvedere atop the Eidolon Tower to stare out over the crowded rooftops to the silver, silken ribbon of the river Yssil far below. Was she there, somewhere, the elusive woman of his dream? If he were to disguise himself as a commoner and slip out into the narrow lanes of the city, would he find her in some humble wineshop or laundry?
But even if he found her, she would like as not prove to be just as compliant, as vacuous as all the others … Diverting, doubtless, for a day or two … An arkhan could have anyone he wanted, just snap the fingers … What was the point of it all? A few hours’ pleasure, gone in the blink of an eye. Beneath the tower lay the royal mausoleum; the glorious relics of the House of Memizhon quietly mouldering to dust beneath their jewelled funeral robes. Even his warrior father Sardion lay there, even Sardion the Invincible had sickened and died …
‘And now this is all mine,’ whispered Melmeth.
The star-trail in the sky made him blink. A pale bright fire blazed across the darkness.
A meteor.
The starry tail extinguished itself in the utter darkness beyond the rim of the distant heights.
An omen. But what did it signify? Was it a portent? A portent of impending disaster?
Melmeth felt a sudden chill, cold as a splash of rain water.
The night sky seemed all the more black now that the dazzling trail of fire had vanished.
An omen.
Perysse, capital city of the Seven Cantons of Ar-Khendye, had grown rich on two thriving trades: silk – and slaves. The wide river Yssil was crowded with merchant ships, slave galleys, spice barques, all seeking a mooring to offload their precious cargoes. But Lai and Laili, ankles and hands shackled, saw only the towering buildings, the sky dwindling to a pale slit glimpsed between overhanging roofs, the gutter-dirt slimy beneath their bare feet as they shuffled forwards in a straggling line, goaded onwards by the harsh voices of their captors.
Legs cramped and weak from confinement in the hold of the galley, the captives stumbled, grasping at each other to stay aright. Knocked off-balance, Laili lost her footing. Lai put out an arm to support her – only to cower away under the sharp sting of a slaver’s flail.
‘Keep moving!’
The slave-market was held every day except holy days in the Square of the Ylliri Fountain, gift to the people of Perysse from the Arkhans of Ar-Khendye. Lai gazed with desperate longing towards the fountain, its milky marble bowl stained green by the gushing water; his dry tongue licked his cracked lips.
‘Me too,’ whispered Laili. Her fingers curled around his. ‘Very thirsty. If only—’
‘Silence!’ A slaver wheeled around, flail raised.
‘Don’t touch her!’ Lai hissed.
A gong drum began to batter out an incessant, strident tattoo. The raised flail slowly dropped. People were gathering, milling at the foot of the steps for a closer view of the day’s merchandise. Ragged lazars, begging for alms, were kicked and whipped away as the gong drum beat louder. Laili’s fingers clutched Lai’s more tightly.
‘I think it’s beginning.’
‘I said silence!’ The slaver tore the stained white robe from Laili’s shoulders.
The shame of it. Stripped, chained like herd beasts. So many eyes staring at them, at their nakedness. Nowhere to hide. So many lascivious, lustful thoughts burning the air, heady as incense fumes.
Lai tried to place himself in front of Laili to shield her – but the slaver tugged roughly at his chain and he fell to his knees.
Voices were raised, numbers shouted. Bartering, Lai thought, barely understanding the unfamiliar accent. The language was the common tongue they shared … but the Perysse inflections were quite alien, rendering them almost incomprehensible to a foreign ear.
They make a pretty pair, those two …’
A silk-draped palanquin was set down at the steps; a woman drew aside the curtains and pointed languidly with her feathered fan. The slave trader was instantly at her side, bowing and offering her his hand.
‘Esteemed Torella, I welcome you. Would you honour me by inspecting my merchandise?’
The Torella beckoned with one taloned fingernail.
Lai reluctantly edged down the steps, Laili clutching more tightly at his hand. The ringed hand beckoned him closer still until it touched his head.
‘Such hair, such an exquisite colour … fire flickering on strands of coppered silk.’
The fingers stroked his cheek, tilting his face upwards.
Beautiful boy …
Images, soft as drifting feathers, floated past. Lewd images, stirrings of lust … Lai tried to conceal a shudder of loathing. Not that, no please, not that—
‘They’re blemished.’ The soft-fleshed finger-tip pressed the moonmark on Lai’s brow.
‘No, Torella, that mark is a guarantee of their true worth, I assure you.’
The Torella’s plucked and painted eyebrows quirked inquisitively upwards.
‘Please ask them yourself.’
‘What does this signify?’ Her breath was sweet, over-sweet with violet-perfumed cachous, as her finger pressed against the sacred moonmark. Lai shook his head.
‘Speak!’ The trader-tugged at the chain.
‘Perhaps the handsome young savage does not understand?’ The Torella smiled into Lai’s face.
‘It means,’ Lai said haltingly, ‘that we are servants of the Goddess. We have vowed our lives to Her service.’
‘I know nothing of this Goddess.’
The slave merchant whispered in the Torella’s ear and Lai saw a slow smile spread across the powdered, painted face.
‘And no one’s interfered with them on the voyage?’
‘Oh no, Torella, my men know better than to spoil the goods.’
Lai strained to decipher the stream of words, knowing that they held the key to their fate.
‘Untouched … and with red hair. He has a predilection for red hair …’
‘The Torella will take them?’ The trader was rubbing his hands in anticipation of a good sale.
‘Tell me your price.’
‘A thousand gold eniths apiece.’
‘Ridiculous.’ The Torella raised her fan and turned away.
‘Wait. Wait. One and a half thousand for the pair.’
‘Extortionate!’
‘The Pleasure House of Black Khassia is very interested in them. Virgins are much in demand—’
‘They can have them.’
The palanquin curtain dropped, veiling the Torella from sight.
‘Twelve hundred, Torella. A special price for you, my most esteemed customer—’
The silk curtain twitched. Lai saw the Torella’s eyes, dark as jet beads, glittering with satisfaction.
‘Have them brought to my rooms at Myn-Dhiel.’
Lai heard the clink of coins; a purse was tossed from the palanquin and the trader caught it in both hands.
‘Those two. To the Torella Sarilla at the palace.’
The slavers pushed in between Lai and Laili and knelt to unchain them. The locks were rusted; one placed his scimitar on the step as he strained to turn the key. Laili’s eyes met Lai’s above the bowed heads of their captors.
Our last chance.
I’ll make a break for it. They’ll go after me – you slip away in the confusion.
She nodded, a slight movement, almost imperceptible. She had understood.
Lai drew in a breath, held it – then as the shackles dropped from his ankles, kicked the slaver in the groin, grabbed the scimitar and took off down the steps.
‘Runaway!’ The shout went up from the fountain steps; a warning bell began to clamour. Lai dived in amongst the crowd for cover, scrabbling his way through the onlookers who ducked hastily away from the shining blade, darting left, then right, like a fast-fleeing deer.
Now, Laili. Hurry!
Crimson jackets appeared in the crowd. Soldiers.
A girl screamed, sharp as a knife drawn across glass. Lai froze.
‘Looking for this, were you?’
They were hauling someone between them. Lai caught a glimpse of the tumbled hair, flame-red as his own.
‘Don’t spoil the goods,’ the trader said nervously. ‘She’s for Myn-Dhiel.’
‘Myn-Dhiel! Why should the Arkhan get all the choicest titbits?’ An arrogant voice rang out, well-used to command; obviously an officer. ‘You won’t mind giving us a sample, will you, sweeting?’
Lai heard Laili whimper some incoherent denial. There was something in the defeated sob that suddenly sent him mad, wild-crazed. And when he saw the officer twist her averted face towards him, forcing his mouth down onto hers—
‘Let her go.’ Lai’s hand tightened about the scimitar hilt. Glint of steel in the cloud-veiled sunlight. ‘I said – let her go!’
‘Another runaway. Drop your weapon, slave!’
The officer’s blade came stabbing in under his guard. Sheer instinct made Lai parry, striking it wide. Sheer instinct made him carry the blow through, slashing upwards—
The tip caught the officer at the base of the neck; Lai felt the shock as the honed metal sliced through the crimson jacket, jarred through flesh against bone.
The officer stared at Lai. His blade dropped to the cobbles with a clang. A crimson snake seemed to uncoil around his throat, his hands rose to tear it away. Slowly, he began to pitch forwards. A hideous half-human gargling, gasping sound issued from his gaping mouth.
‘Lai – run!’ screamed Laili as the slavers bundled her into the palanquin.
Lai just stood there. The man’s glazed face stared up at him, drained of all colour. Yet still the coils of the crimson snake unravelled from his gashed throat onto the cobbles.
‘I – I didn’t mean to—’ he whispered.
It had been his first vow to the Goddess.
I will harm no living creature. I will not kill.
He hardly felt the other soldiers prise the sword from his shaking hand, hardly noticed the jeers of the ragged crowd that had gathered about them. Hardly noticed that Laili’s palanquin had disappeared from sight.
‘Bind his hands!’ ordered one of the soldiers.
Lai wanted to run. But his knees trembled so much he could not move. They forced his hands behind his back, the rope bit into his skin as they pulled it tight about his wrists, tugged him across the cobbles.
‘Wh–where are you taking me?’
‘Hold your tongue, slave!’ One hit him across the mouth. He tasted blood, hot and salt on his swelling lip. ‘You’ve killed an officer of the Tarkhas Zhudiciar. The punishment is death.’
Deep in the foetid hold of the slave barque, one of the slavers stumbled over a tumbled bundle of old rags. Cursing, he kicked at it – and then recoiled as, in the lantern light, the festering bundle opened … releasing an overwhelming stench of putrefaction.
Not every slave imprisoned in the airless hold survived the journey to Perysse. And by the smell of this one, he had been dead some while. Yet beneath the mouldering sacking, the slaver thought he saw a sudden convulsive stir of movement.
‘Maistre – Maistre—’
‘What’s this racket?’
By the light of the Maistre’s lanthorn, the slaver pointed out the corpse.
‘Something’s – alive in there.’
‘Maggots,’ said the Maistre impassively. With the tip of his staff he flicked aside the rags …
‘What in all Ar-Khendye—’ One hand clamped over nose and mouth, he held the lanthorn closer over the emaciated body.
‘Dead leaves?’
‘Mithiel knows!’ The Maistre backed away.
Out of the folds of cloth came fluttering something with ragged wings. The slaver flapped his hands in front of his face, batting the sluggish creatures away.
‘Afraid of a few moths?’ jeered the Maistre, recovering himself. ‘Get this carrion off my ship. And swab the hold down till it smells sweet as a spice barque. We don’t want the Zhudiciar’s men poking around in here, asking questions.’
The midden heap where the slavers slung the rotting sacks was already noisy with blowflies. They piled rubbish on top until the slave’s corpse sank slowly down out of sight. Then they set off for the nearest tavern on the quay. After a glass or two of spiced khassafri, the incident was forgotten, blurred by a stupor of drink and dreamweed …